


After Life

by SylverFletcher



Series: Hermitcraft Gift Exchange [3]
Category: Hermitcraft RPF, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Flower Crowns, Gen, awful narrative jokes, crime in the name of baked goods, heavy considerations of the meaning of life and death, human cleo, zombie joe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 20:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21380335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylverFletcher/pseuds/SylverFletcher
Summary: Joe is a zombie. Joe has been a zombie for a long time. That still won't stop him from wondering how in the world whatever deity exists allowed this to happen to him, allowed him to rise from the dead, when nothing of the sort should have been at all possible.It won't stop Cleo from continuing to drag him on stupid adventures either, though, and he wouldn't have it any other way.(gift 3 of 3 for the hermitcraft gift exchange)
Relationships: joe & cleo
Series: Hermitcraft Gift Exchange [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1542508
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	After Life

**Author's Note:**

> for queertiepie.tumblr.com for the prompt "cleo and joe being friends" (i think)
> 
> UH SO YEAH queertiepie is my friend and when i was asked if i could do a gift for them i jUMPED ON IT because HECK YEAH I CAN and i hope this fic is acceptable and you like it my friend because i wanted it to be pERFECT and if it isn't i'll write you another i s2g--  
(and yes, this is why i was asking you about au's you like that one time)

"Everything in life happens for a reason, and thus, everything in life has a reason. If there is a higher being, a great deity somewhere far above us all, they are without a doubt laughing at the way we mere mortals blindly shuffle our way through this existence they have given us, tripping over the obstacles they placed yet we do not see. Of course, there's also the chance that being is scrambling themselves, searching desperately through everything they've done and trying to find the mistake that could have  _ possibly _ led to my particular condition, searching through eons of work for the glitch in the system. Because, after all, they never intended for us to experience that thin, invisible line between life and death; the condition of the abstract, the space of grey between two states of existence. Everything in life happens for a reason; but does the same hold true for death, as well? Or is the existence of the undead merely a fluke, a mistake made by those that started it all, something that should not be? And if something should not be, yet  _ is, _ does it then create its own purpose?"

"Joe, stop debating your immortality before you build another temple and an effigy of tridents in a thunderstorm in an accidental attempt to turn yourself into zombie jerky while asking the gods for answers again."

"I know they're up there, Cleo. I know they're digging through their filing cabinets trying to find the misplaced letter in some fancy godly document that caused this. And please don't refer to me as jerky, it gives me the undead heebie jeebies."

"Then shut up and get off the ground and come help me, I dunno, pull a prank or something."

"...Okay."

* * *

It was hard to remember, now, where it all began. When his existence changed from the feeling of a beating heart and the taste of the air itself, to the feeling of cold skin that can’t be warmed and the dull, almost disconnected feeling of not being alive anymore. It was hard to remember what it was like before, what food was like, or sleep, or anything he now knows is reserved for the living. It wasn’t something he ever could have guessed he would someday experience, this strange feeling of being caught between the pages. It was as if he had been paused, frozen in place in body and soul, while the world continued to move around him. He could still feel the wind, or the sun, but it was muted as if wearing thick layers, while everyone else could progress on as normal, without a care in the world and taking for granted what they can experience just as he once did.

Though, that wasn’t to say it was bad. It was just different, and he was more than interested in following this path through. It was fascinating in the strangest of ways to look back on his life, or his existence as a whole, the way it was now; the fact that he, and he alone as far as he knew, could describe his time on this earth in two particular chapters titled  _ life _ and  _ after life _ . No one else could say that, none other could quite see between the cracks in the world in the way he now could, and he was more than happy to explore that even if he had to trade most of the senses of the living for it. If he lived his life with open eyes as best he could, looking under the proverbial stones of the universe for the clues to what it meant to be alive hidden underneath, then being dead has made those stones as light as feathers and the words as clear as if he had been given a magnifying glass made for his grandmother.

From the perspective of death, life has an entirely different outlook than he’d once thought. From this side, passed on to where no one has gone and come back from before, he can understand far better the things that matter and the things that don’t, though he’d still like to say he’d had a pretty good understanding of that in the first place. It’s easier, now, to know that what matters most is the time they all have, when they don’t know what may come after or when it may end. He thinks of himself as lucky, considering it could all have been over, and he’d never have known; his time would have ended, and if he were to look back on it at the time of his death, would it have been enough? He didn’t know. But whether it would have been or not, and for whatever the reason may have been or may continue to be, he met his end and his time continued. Whether he lived his life enough to satisfy his soul or not, he had the option now to add onto it for as long as his afterlife may last, and that is something that he intended to appreciate to the fullest.

And what, pray tell, does one do with their time once they’ve been harshly taught of just how little of it everyone has in the end? He wouldn’t be able to say for someone else, but for him, personally— it’s about the people. Those in his life that he wants to be able to say he spent as much of that time with them as he could, and to look back on the experiences they had together, whatever they may be. Of course, there were always times where he still questioned  _ why _ or  _ how _ or thought  _ this is an awful idea, _ but no matter how ridiculous or confusing it became, he knew what mattered was the fun they had together in the process.

And that was what brought him to now; in dramatically tattered clothes far removed from his usual style of not  _ dressing _ like a zombie even if he was one, surrounded in fish that were somewhere between terrified and curious, and sealed inside a tank of water that he had a sneaking suspicion he was turning into undead flavored tea. He was a bit concerned for the fish, but they didn’t seem to mind, and with the way Cleo suddenly scrambled out of sight behind a support pillar he assumed he wouldn’t be in here for much longer.

Across the vast hall, the grand doors of the corporate headquarters eased open without so much as a creak, the owner of the building turning and shutting them behind him before he even looked up. It meant he hadn’t seen Joe yet, in this surprise popup tank in the center of the fancy Concorp hall, and for the first time Joe considered if Cleo wanted him to do anything or not. Was he supposed to act scary in here? Or pretend to act as undead as possible, as if he’d lost his mind to the decay? Well, there was no way to tell now, with his chaotic friend having disappeared into her hiding place.

Cub approached, his head still down as he poured over lists and documents of some kind in his hands. Joe wasn’t sure what they were, but if he had to hazard a guess, he’d assume they’re receipts of the vast amount of profits Concorp is known for. Either way, they held his attention raptly enough that he didn’t even notice the giant tank that had appeared in the middle of his corporation headquarters until he nearly ran right into it. At that point he finally paused just before the glass, slowly dragging his gaze away from the papers and up to the glass, making eye contact with Joe where he stood inside the vaguely tinted water. Joe waved at him.

“Joe, why are you in here? No, first, why are you in a fish tank?” Cub asked him, seemingly not bothered whatsoever by the zombie and fish soup Cleo had blessed him with. His voice was partially muffled through the glass and the water, and the zombie didn’t have to guess he wouldn’t hear a reply even if Joe had one. Really, what was Cleo trying to achieve here, actually? She hadn’t said. Joe just shrugged. “Is that safe for those fish?”

While Cub deliberated, Joe could see Cleo pop out from the support pillar somewhere behind him and mime something at him. She almost seemed like she was trying to dance, but it wasn’t any kind he’d ever seen before, so he had to conclude it was probably her rendition of what she thought a zombie prom would probably look like. Which, in and of itself was  _ probably _ offensive, but considering Joe was the only sentient zombie in existence, and he didn’t care, it was probably fine. He stared at her for a moment more and then turned back to Cub, before the Vex could take notice of anything going on behind him.

“Do you need help getting out?” Cub continued, digging for his pickaxe and then holding it up curiously, though Joe didn’t miss how he kind of looked tempted to just leave him there. Instead of answering, Joe did his best to mimic whatever it was Cleo did just to make her happy, holding his arms up and sidestepping. For good measure, he added in his best attempt at a zombie noise, though it came out as a bunch of bubbles and a gargle. His first assumption was correct; he was making a tank of zombie tea, and it tasted exactly like he would have assumed, even with as muted as his senses were.

Without waiting for any further strangely mimed and dance-like replies, Cub just broke the glass, allowing a stream of zombie fish soup to cascade out over the wood floor. From Joe’s perspective, it was like being on a water ride of some sort at Hermit Land, the stream carrying him right out alongside the fish that had been in with him. Really, he almost felt like a mermaid princess for a moment, riding out of the tank on a wave of zombie water with his fish companions and only coming to a stop in the middle of the mess on the floor a few too short moments later. He just so happened to be facing Cub, and was able to witness the way he wrinkled his nose at the mess, and potentially the smell.

“You might be wondering why this happened.” Joe started, using his best completely level tone despite the fact he was sitting in a giant puddle surrounded by flopping salmon. “Well, Cub, the answer is as clear as the glass you’ve just broken. You see, water is a very remarkable substance; it takes on the properties of anything you put in it, like when you make soup or tea. It’s like you get more of that thing, because you put it in water, and the water became that thing. Now, you might be wondering how that applies to me, or the fish, but that’s simple too. Obviously, the answer here is that you’re my friend, and I decided you could use more of me around because friends are good to have around all the time, so I put myself in water and turned it into me and now there’s more of me to go around Concorp so you don’t have to be without your dear friend, me.”

“And the fish?”

“The fish represent everything I offer you with my friendship, all of the great fun and many business opportunities that arise from having such a good undead friend as myself. That, or they represent the vegetables in the soup, but that would be a little bit strange because they’re fish. I don’t know about you, Cub, but I don’t think I’ve ever made a zombie soup with fish as vegetables before, have you?”

“Joe, as much as I— appreciate, your endless friendship and… zombie water on my floor, I know you couldn’t seal yourself in there alone. Where’s Cleo?” Cub looked around suspiciously as he spoke, squinting at every possible hiding spot in the room.

In truth, Joe wasn’t sure where Cleo was now. He knew she hid behind that one support pillar at first, but after she mimed at him what to do, he was pretty sure he hadn’t actually seen her disappear back behind there. Considering she was nowhere in sight now, though, he had to wonder what exactly she was up to, and he was absolutely sure he was a distraction for something. “I have no idea.” Joe shrugged, truthfully.

Cub stared at him for a moment, and then sighed, clearly knowing he wasn’t going to get anything more out of the zombie since Joe  _ technically _ had no more details to share. “Okay, come on.” He reached out, offering a hand to Joe, though he was careful to stand as far from the puddle as he possibly could to save his shoes from the undead marinade he was already going to have to scrub out of the floor. Accepting it with grace and letting the Vex pull him to his feet, Joe couldn’t help but spot Cleo as she tried to sneak past behind Cub’s back and toward the door, and this time Cub didn’t miss his averted attention. Spinning around fast enough to make his lab coat whip around like a flag in a tornado, she was caught mid step as Cub pointed a dramatically accusatory finger at her. “I knew it! What did you do?!”

She froze in place, glanced at Joe, and then took on what she must have thought was a casual pose. Though she looked more like she was leaning on an imaginary cactus with slightly less imaginary spines, if the uncomfortable expression on her face from leaning on air had anything to say about it. Then she mimed what Joe  _ thought _ must be some kind of confusion gesture, though it also could’ve been her miming whisking eggs, or maybe something about a pirate treasure. Cub half turned back to him, though clearly still keeping an eye on his human partner in unwitting potential crime.

“What’s she doing?”

“I think she’s trying to tell you that if you follow the treasure map, you’ll find a whole captain’s trove of meringue. What treasure map she means, I’m not sure, though maybe you could ask her crew.” Joe explained, and neither Cleo nor Cub looked satisfied with that answer. “What? I’m just reading what I see.”

“Her crew are made of armor stands,” Cub pointed out, at the same time Cleo pointed at her ears and then crossed her arms in an X shape.

“Ohh. Cub, she says she’s deaf and can’t hear anything you’re saying, so you can’t accuse her of anything she may or may not have done.” At that, Cleo finally looked satisfied, crossing her arms on her chest with a smug expression, while Cub’s gaze snapped back to her again.

“... Cleo, have you forgotten we know each other? I know you aren’t deaf.”

Cleo paused, and then took on a surprised expression. “Oh! Would you look at that! I’m magically cured and now I can go back home to my parrots and hear how much they love me byeeeee—” She said everything in the most awe inspired voice she could possibly manage in a rush, all while backing away toward the door. Joe took the signal to follow her, mimicking her exact level of fanfare and raising his arms to some unknown lord as he went.

“This is truly a magnificent moment, Cub, I’m sure you understand I must go and bear witness to this miracle that has just been blessed upon our dearest friend Cleo, and definitely not as an excuse to leave without any sort of punishment for what has transpired here today, it definitely isn’t that.”

But Cub just shook his head, waving them off with a barely suppressed chuckle, and the two didn’t need any further invitation to escape back out through the front door again. Outside, Cleo was waiting for him and took hold of his hand, dragging him in a running escape across the Concorp courtyard. They passed the front gate with nothing more than an uncaring shrug from the Vindicator guard, which, Joe was pretty sure that told a lot about how much they may or may not pay that guy.

He expected her to stop somewhere outside of the corporation’s property, if only to catch her breath from running. But Cleo kept going, her grip on his hand never letting go as she continued to lead the way into and through the shopping district. Between shops and trees and various landscaping they wove, and though Joe would never jump over hedges himself, that was the route she led him on, and he didn’t question it. This was what Cleo was like; chaotic and more than a little impulsive, always taking the most direct path to wherever she was going even if it wasn’t the easiest one, and that was maybe one of the things Joe liked most about her. Where he had seen the end of life and found himself questioning everything more often than not, caught in a quiet landslide between what is and what shouldn’t be, Cleo threw caution and logic to the wind any chance she could get just because it might be fun. And she’d drag him into it without a second thought, coming out of nowhere to pull him away when he fell too deeply into his own unanswerable questions, seemingly knowing exactly when he needed it most; and then things like  _ this _ would happen, where they’d do something to confuse their other friends and she’d give him the perfect chance to “make it weird”, as she always put it. It was just their dynamic, and Joe was more than happy to jump over hedges and blindly follow her lead.

She finally slowed down once they’d reached the edge of the district, though she didn’t let go of his hand as she continued to lead the way up the hill on the other side of the river. The shopping district fell away beside them as they climbed up and up, until they reached the flat little section of grass at the top of the hill above the stock exchange, and Cleo settled right down onto the ground. She was silent for a while, breathing heavily from the run across the district and the subsequent climb, and Joe just squeezed her hand a little bit tighter as he sat down beside her in support. He didn’t have to deal with air, or breathing, or overexertion, or anything of the sort anymore, and he really didn’t miss it; but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten what it was like to deal with it.

Until she could speak again, Joe looked out over the world around them. It was a good choice of places to come to; they had a full bird’s eye view of the shopping district from up here, with the ocean on the opposite side to contrast it, and the sun dragging long shadows across all of it as it dipped toward the horizon. And it was warm— he could barely feel it, but he knew it was. The summer breeze blowing in from over the ocean combined with the slowly lowering sun, and the patch of grass they were sitting in now that had surely been right in its path not so long before, it wasn’t hard to guess that it was probably one of those moments that felt perfect to those that could still feel it. Beside him, Cleo gave a contented sigh, breathing in the crisp ocean air and further confirming what he was already thinking.

“So, what did you do to Cub?” Joe finally asked after another long moment, watching Cleo’s face closely as he did. Just as he suspected, her expression split into a wide, smug grin, before she turned away and began digging for something. “I’m assuming it was something relatively easy that—  _ no, _ Cleo you did  _ not,” _

Even he couldn’t hide his amused bewilderment as she held out one of Cub’s signature gourmet cakes for him to see, seemingly pulled from the void of the narrative itself as it stood proud in perfect condition despite their escape from Concorp. The look on her face behind it was identical to that of the cat that caught the canary, not an ounce of remorse to be found.

“You know he’d sell you one if you asked.”

Also from seemingly nowhere, Cleo didn’t hesitate to poke a fork into her new cake. “Yeah, but it’s more fun this way. I’ll pay him back later, maybe. Besides, you can’t say you didn’t have fun being a Drowned for a bit.” She teased, waving the bite of cake toward his face before eating it. To say he had been tempted to steal that bite would be an understatement, even if he couldn’t taste it.

“This still means you’re a cake thief now, Cleo. A criminal of sweets.”

“Crime is delicious.”

She spoke around a mouthful of cake, a look of pure happiness on her face, and Joe couldn’t help but smile at her antics. He may be as cold and dead as the mobs that haunted the night, but there was nothing that warmed his still heart as much as seeing his best friend happy. They lapsed back into silence as he let her enjoy her cake, eventually laying down into the grass and letting his attention wander again. Idly, he traced a hand over one of the many flowers growing all around them, though the sensation was merely a memory. He’d never quite realized  _ just _ how much of the world around them was alive, until he wasn’t anymore. Even when he picked the flower from the ground, turning it over in his greyed hand, it held its color and life as firmly as Cleo held her cake.

Soon he picked another, and another, carefully folding their stems together one at a time. Left, right, left, right, he weaved the lengths of green into a long braid, adding more flowers with each turn with the same practiced ease he’d thankfully never lost. Cleo watched as he worked, her attention firm on the flowers in his hands as the sky darkened around them and her cake diminished from a full round to a leftover half. By the time he had a full strand of braided flowers, at the exact length he knew it should be from years of practice, she’d set what was left of her cake aside and turned more fully to him.

“I think yellow and red is a new combination for you.” She mused, shuffling closer and inspecting the colors as he finished it off, tying the ends together and weaving in the loose pieces. “You usually make me blue and yellow ones.”

With the completed crown in his hands, she didn’t hesitate to dip her head down toward him and let him set it gently into her hair. “There are only poppies and dandelions here.” He shrugged, adjusting it carefully and making sure it wouldn’t tug or get tangled, setting her hair perfectly into place around it. Some of their other friends could be squeamish about being too close to him, now that he was undead; but she never cared, and that made him feel almost human as he styled her new crown perfectly into place.

She sat back up once he was finished, her hands held up to gently investigate the crown and get an idea of what it looked like on her, though they both knew she’d worn enough of them to know exactly what they looked like. It had been their ritual for years upon years by now, to end off the days with Cleo’s inevitable shenanigans with these times of comfortable unwinding together, flowers woven together and placed on her head time and time again. Joe liked to imagine the flowers represented them; woven together by the lives they lived and the experiences they have had together over the years, inseparable even in the face of tragedy. He barely remembered what it was like to be alive, to breathe the air or feel a beating heart in his own chest, but he vividly remembered the flowers. The different smell of each type, the delicate softness of them as he’d make crown after crown to set into her hair, and the warm and secure feeling of being hugged afterward by a friend he knew would never go anywhere. Maybe that was why it stuck with him most, now, when he’d crossed that threshold and left his life behind; when  _ he _ had been the one to leave  _ her  _ by way of his own death, as accidental as it had been.

But that also made it mean more now than it ever had before. As she pulled him close and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him tightly enough in her grip that he knew she was thinking of the same thing, they didn’t need to talk about it. They both knew they were lucky, that if everything had worked the way the world was supposed to, then she’d be alone on this hill today. That they never would have realized just how much they needed or relied on each other, or looked forward to these moments with the flowers, until they were gone. Until he was gone.

For whatever reason, there was a glitch in the system. A mistake, a fluke, something that caused him to cheat death. He didn’t understand why, or how, no matter how many hours he might spend laying around trying to figure it out, and maybe he never would. But regardless of the answers he could not have, it reminded them both that life is fleeting, that these moments they cherish so much could end at any time, and they had no way of knowing when. He was sure that the one thing that mattered most was time, and how they spent the limited amount of it they had.

And knowing that, Joe was more than happy to spend all of his time just like this. Pulling pranks, being ‘weird’, and making flower crowns, all with the chaotic best friend currently squishing him in her grip to keep him from ever leaving her side again. If his afterlife were to end, and he could look back on everything only to see all of these moments and little else, he knew his soul would be satisfied.

And Cleo? Well, if the hundreds of dried flower crowns hanging on her walls at home meant anything, she agreed.

**Author's Note:**

> and then they went back to concorp to rip out and replace the floor because they aren't that mean
> 
> cleo did not ever pay for the cake


End file.
